


existence as an act of rebellion

by catchpenny



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 20:01:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20512667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catchpenny/pseuds/catchpenny
Summary: "Hi," Enjolras says, the first time they meet. His eye contact is perfect. His eyes are a clear Raphael blue, the colour of heaven. His handshake is firm, if a touch impersonal. The moment feels weighted, somehow, more than the first rush of a sudden mad crush, of heady physical intoxication. "You're a friend of Bahorel's? That's great. Are you a member ofAttac, too?"The second time:Salut,a new guy says. A boring start, but it’s late and he’s online.Grantaire replies with,face pics?Look at him, being gentlemanly, asking for face before ass.





	existence as an act of rebellion

**Author's Note:**

> I believe I wrote this c. February 2015, for an exchange where the prompt asked for a romcom-style plot a la 'You've Got Mail' where the characters know each other two different ways; this is not a form that I am very fluent in, so there's a reason I never finished this.
> 
> Which, speaking of, see the warning tag! This is a perma-WIP. The chances I will finish this are not high. Not impossible, but not high. Understanding of Grindr technology is also c. 2015 and secondhand.

“_Tourists_,” Grantaire’s favourite rant begins, with a glottal sound of disgust. “Paris, the city of love! What these naïfs fail to understand is that Paris is not the city of love, but the opposite. Not hate; that’s a truism. The opposite of love is something far worse: Paris is the city of relationships. Every second person on the street – because they come in pairs, à deux – is in one, whether they’ve formalised it at the mairie or not. 

“To be in a _relationship_ is to be safe, even if it means being bored or unhappy. To be single is to be in danger. Relationships are round little worlds with no threatening corners; the threats of a relationship they feel they can master and choose – this feeling is a reassuring one. Therefore these relationships are interminable. Not quite good enough to get married, not bad enough to break up. While the English language has the good taste to distinguish ‘alone’ from ‘lonely’, French only offers _seul_. To be _seul_ is to be cast over by the shadows of loneliness, only darkened by the local nonexistence of celibacy –”

“I fear you are cast over by the same shadows,” Joly says at an opportune moment in this particular rendition of the well-thumbed speech, when Grantaire’s only halfway launched. “Why advertise it?”

Grantaire runs out of words and spleen like a pricked balloon. 

He tries to glare at Joly, but glaring at Joly is difficult in any circumstances. Joly has a face, as sweet and difficult to dislike as a happy Labrador. Worse, a happy Labrador wearing a bow-tie. 

Not that Joly’s wearing a bow-tie today, but his face is propped in his hands and his chin in tucked into the warm nest of his scarf until only his upper lip shows. His glasses are slipping down the end of his pink nose to meet it. 

“Fuck you,” Grantaire says finally, and tips his glass at him in unwilling salute. “The point stands. I fucking hate Paris, and I fucking hate couples, and I fucking hate–”

“Not getting any,” Bossuet finishes for him, grinning, and at least it’s easy to glare at him. He looks as pitying as someone getting laid on the regular by two separate – and often simultaneous – partners can be, which is far too pitying for someone wearing a bucket hat. It’s not how Grantaire had planned to finish his sentence, but it’s close enough to his sentiments. 

And true. All the action Grantaire’s had lately has been procured by his own hand. Five fingers, a square palm. An ascending Fibonacci sequence from his fingertips to the base of his wrist. He has ugly hands, short and inelegant, the semi-impermeable ink black under his nails like a bruise, dirty from smudging a bit of charcoal, _just so_, and fuck the teacher who once told him he was grubbying his paper. 

Grantaire wastes a lot of time grubbying paper or person. When his imagination fails – ha! Better to say, when his leash on his imagination fails – he spends considerable time thumbing the screen of his phone, gathering either fuel for his spank bank or for his jaundiced view of humanity. Sometimes it’s both at once. 

Meeting in person is optional. Sometimes he wants the physical oblivion, to bury his face between a girl’s thighs and feel her come, to let a guy shove him down and fuck his grand problème away for a little while. More often, he can’t be bothered. Doesn’t want to meet up and get the look,_ you’re uglier than I thought but you’ll do for a fuck, _ or worse; _ you won’t. _

Worse still, the invisible strings, sticky as spider-silk, thrown out like a net to catch and tangle him. Message after message, boring predictable words from boring predictable people that make him sick with boredom as soon as he’s come. _ Call me. Weren’t we going to hook up again_. Even men have doing it lately. That’s not why Grantaire likes men, what he wants them for. Finding the woman who won’t is like looking for the proverbial unicorn, the even more apocryphal virgin in postmodern Paris. Floréal burned his fingers too badly, too recently. Grantaire wants no strings. 

He makes a sour face at Bossuet and bolts back the last of the beer.

"It was a good speech," Joly says kindly, and oh jesus, this has the hallmarks of another diplomatic discussion of Grantaire’s grand problème. There’s a certain tone that Joly and Bossuet like to employ whenever they feel, as his friends, that Grantaire needs a kick in the ass. Bahorel would just supply the kick, but Joly and Bossuet – Joly-and-Bossuet, an indivisible whole, JolyandBossuet, the Siamese twins – are subtler. "Only – I know you're not looking for a relationship; in fact, everyone within a few metres of us knows – I’m just saying I think you'd get laid more if you didn’t have a version of that rant in your profile, perhaps? I know it’s a radical suggestion – _Hé_, you asshole, are you listening to me?”

“You reminded me to,” Grantaire lies, still swiping lazily, “and anyway, truth in advertising.”

Joly _looks_ at him, and Grantaire puts his phone down and signals to Louison the bartender for another beer. Waiting for new matches to pop is only going to drive him crazy. Smug fucking couples and smug fucking threesomes and smug fucking Parisians. 

Not that the scene would be better back home, anywhere, but that doesn’t mean he can’t shift the blame. Speaking of Paris, the fact that he can’t smoke at the bar is also fucked beyond reason. Can he be bothered to get up and go stand in the freezing night, either on the pavement or out on the balcony? 

Nope. Grantaire raises his voice, “Louison, _ma sucette_, can I light up in here? There’s no one in this shithole but us. I won’t ask you to swallow the smoke.”

She gives him a look of towering hauteur and doesn’t add a little more to the beer she’s pulling for him when the foam dissipates. She slams it in front of him a good inch empty below the rim, and somehow still manages to slop some over the side before storming off.

“Have you considered,” Bossuet says, “that maybe that wasn’t the way to get a blowjob?”

“Did I ask for one?"

“You know how you said it.”

Grantaire gives him his best dirty leer. “Like that?”

“Ugh,” Bossuet says with unflattering horror, then conjures up a worse leer still. “_Eh? _”

“_Eugh_,” Joly says, catching sight of them, locked in duelling grimaces, and then attempts one of his own.

-

Grantaire’s grande problème is a protean thing. Sometimes it’s the price of cigarettes. Other times, it’s the nominal rent he pays for his little alcove curtained off the main room in a squat in Pigalle, into which four or five students and demi-students can be crammed at any one time before pushing fire safety regulations.

Bahorel lets rent slide most of the time. As a flatmate, he’s peerless – except for his tendency to watch rugby in the early hours of the morning, and to fuck his not-girlfriend at similarly ungodly hours, both with too much noise and enthusiasm. He has a horrible moustache he uses wax to style into points, and a tendency to club his hair back in a style that Joly and Bossuet would make thoughtful note of when doing their hipster math.

(They abandoned the bars in the Marais years ago. Now JolyandBossuet claim they can calculate the slow encroachment of the same commodification into the twentieth arrondissement. The old Sexodrome is replaced with a faux-American diner; they frown and whisper about Hopf bifurcations, the curve of the optimal spatial extension of the hipster population most favourable for synchronisation. Their paper napkins cease to contain lines for the two-man act they’ve been talking about for three years and instead calculate things like_ (Percentage area of neck covered in tattoo ink) / λ + (Pairs of socks owned + Albums owned in vinyl) x 100 = ? and π x Annual days off work with wheat gluten intolerance = Hours spent on ukulele offending tourists?? Maximum amount willing to pay street vendor for bhlang lassi x (number of beards + man-bun combos) = Likelihood of gentrifying????) _

Sometimes it’s the mere fact of being beholden to Bahorel that’s Grantaire’s problem. Anyway, his living situation isn’t the problem, if you don’t count all the smaller, separate problems that come with it. Grantaire’s problem is so ineffable, so all-encompassing, that early on it seemed easiest to roll it up into a ball and give it a name and a face instead of trying to fight a thousand different losing battles.

“Fucking _Enjolras_,” Grantaire tells Bahorel once he gets home from the bar and the best gargoyle-faces of Joly and Bossuet and throws himself down onto the couch beside him. After a beat, he plucks the blunt out of his hand and inhales. Part of Bahorel's peerlessness as a flatmate is his weed. “Everything about him is perfect.”

Bahorel squints at him. “You’re fucked up.” 

Grantaire wishes. He grimaces. “Nah. Louison cut me off.”

“Booze, or –?”

“_That, _ months ago.” No more blowjobs for him, however nicely he asks.

“Sucks,” Bahorel says, and then, “I like to see a woman stand up for herself. Good for her.”

“But not for me.” 

“There are more fish in the sea, n’est-pas?”

Grantaire grimaces again. “Fucking _Enjolras._”

This could be a non sequitur, but Bahorel’s listened to Grantaire on the subject so many times that he can make the appropriate deductive leap without Grantaire having to spell it out. 

He’s listened to Grantaire on the subject enough that he doesn’t bother leaping to Enjolras’s defence, either, which only irritates Grantaire further. He should be defended. Enjolras hasn’t committed any sins; his are those of omission only. Conceivably – not that Grantaire ever allows this, mid-complaint – it’s not even entirely his fault that he was cast out of a perfect mould when his fellow humans are marred by splits, joining-creases, bubbles. Enjolras’s proportions could be mapped by Leonardo onto grid paper without a single fault. His features match a Greek statue’s for an example of the golden ratio in action. His fucking hair _is_ golden. Break him down into equations and he’s a perfect number that will always square. It’s even conceivable that he’s not so perfect out of the desire to show up his peers – ha! – by deliberate example.

Bahorel hums, breaking Grantaire’s train of thought. “I worry when you start talking in numbers.”

“Fucking hate them.”

“Yeah, that’s why I worry,” Bahorel says. He takes the blunt back again and pats Grantaire on the shoulder. “Sleep it off. And, hey. Come to the Musain with me tomorrow, and you can stare at him all you want.”

It’s a sop, but Grantaire could use one. Worse, it’s a pacifier. Bahorel’s well aware of the effect Enjolras has on him. Enjolras does something strange and soothing to Grantaire’s insides; rolls him up into a ball, calms him like milk. 

“Éponine’ll kick my ass,” he says, which is a yes. To seem less pathetic, he adds, “Enjolras could _lic_– ”

The pat on his shoulder is heavier this time, almost a swat. “Thin line between tragic and gross, little man,” Bahorel says, and shuts his eyes, feigning sleep. 

When Bahorel shuts his eyes, the couch ceases to be communal furniture and undergoes metaphysical change into his private bedroom. Grantaire takes the hint and gets up. 

The Musain, tomorrow.

-

Swiping through profiles is easy, matter-of-fact, barely considered. No, maybe, no; appalling, intriguing, horrific. Bahorel might talk about the importance of self-respect, but Grantaire has too much self-preservation – as much as everyone who knows him would laugh raucously at the thought – to reply to messages seeking needy self-identified cocksluts or cumdumps most of the time. A ‘Hi’ is boring and gets short shrift. Prewritten essays of similar length to the one on his own profile come in for particular derision. 

He’s not in the mood tonight for pictures of guys with their pets, their nieces and nieces, the kind of cute shit that’s bait for morons. His head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton and his throat has tightened with smoke; his fingertips are still tingling. He needs to get off so he can sleep.

Pop. _Salut,_ a new guy says. 

A boring start, but it’s late and he’s online. _hi_, Grantaire says. Fuck. _face pics? _

_Not premium, so just the profile pic. _

Grantaire hums. The picture on the profile is a body shot, which – okay. Not boring. Bland, a little, since faceless, but nice toned stomach and slim hips. Promising hint of underwear. Pale golden tan, a little blond hair low on his abdomen. It’s probably not his actual picture, since none of the profile info is filled out, but whatever. Grantaire has no stones to throw when it comes to catfishing other catfishes for a wank.

_dick pics then. _

_You’re blunt. _

_i'm hard. _

_Really? _

Grantaire rolls his eyes at the guy’s slowness. _not yet, but you can help with that. _

_I was going to ask about your profile. _

_what about it? _

_You're right. People in Paris – people in general – pair off too easily. They treat romantic attachment as far too important and all-encompassing. _

_got dumped lately? _

_No. Just don’t believe in it. _

_do you believe in sexting? _

_Obviously. _

A pause. Grantaire wonders how much blunter he’s going to be until Mr. Enlightened Free Spirit gets the point, and then there’s another message, like its writer had thought better about sending it but sent it anyway. 

_We’re supposed to say textopornographie instead of sexting now, according to the vaunted authorities at l’Academie Francaise. _

_you are the opposite of sexy, _Grantaire replies, and then, because he can’t help himself either, _they haven’t got their ducks wet in centuries. probably come in spurts of dust and water vapour. _

_Ducks? _

_D I C K S. my dick in you, specifically. _

_I don’t bottom. _

Grantaire’s about to swipe right and cut this bullshit, move on to someone else, when the next message pops up.

_I give great head. _

Better. _better, _ Grantaire says, uses his thumb to pop the button on his jeans, lifts his hips, squirming out of them a little. He'll have to be quiet. Bahorel's only a thin cotton barrier away. 

It’s a one bedroom flat; the girls have the bedroom, the bratling sleeps on their floor when he bothers to turn up, and Bahorel has the pull-out couch even though his name is on the lease. Grantaire has the angled corner of the living room he's walled off with old sheets, big enough for a mattress, and he has to be as silent about getting off as he was as a kid himself. 

He cups himself through his boxers, testing the weight of his balls. _ you like going down? _

_Better than anything else. _

_fucking? _

_I don't fuck. _

_except with your mouth? that counts, unless you’re american_

_I'd suck you off if you were closer. _

Grantaire hums, then bites his lip, remembering to be quiet. It’s working for him, though. He curls his hand around his cock, trying to visualise tonight’s wank material. 

A natural blond, unless he bleaches his pubic hair. Nordic-looking, maybe Swedish. Probably has that bleached look some of them have, white eyelashes and eyebrows that give their eyes a certain vulnerable nakedness. Heavy freckled features, maybe, that look hewed out of the same blond wood they use for their furniture.

Grantaire focuses on building that image so he doesn’t think about other blonds; he jokes, but his infatuation has painted a charmed circle around Enjolras, an invisible line that he won’t cross. Something too important, or too fragile, something that might dissipate into dust if he breathes on it. 

Also, it’s a very thin line between tragic and gross.

_send me yr face pic. want to imagine coming all over it_

_I don't give that out. _

Ugh. _ famous, married, politician? _

_Discreet._  
  
_hideously ugly? _

_What about a picture of my dick? _

Another one-two punch; just when Grantaire’s right on the edge of killing this again, the guy ups the ante. 

It takes more than a half second for the guy – Max, according to the app, name probably as fake as his picture – to send it. That could mean it’s really him in the profile, that he’s really, right now, right this moment, taking a picture to send; adjusting the angle, stroking his dick, getting it fat and pretty, finding the best filter. Somewhere not too far away, a few blocks over, a guy with a tight body’s talking to him, closing his eyes and trying to imagine Grantaire’s cock in his mouth.

It could be true. It’s far more likely that it’s not, but it could be true, Grantaire tells himself. He’s a natural pessimist, but he’ll believe in anything just before he gets off, and repudiate it right after –

Pop.

Grantaire has the promised dick pic enlarged with a swift tap of his thumb as soon as he gets it, and oh – yeah. Fuck knows that there’s more dick than he could ever jerk it to all over the internet, but there’s still something better about dick you’re talking to, dick that’s hard for _you_ in particular. And this one is hot. Lean college-boy thighs, spread a little. Head of cock butting against flat stomach. Hand wrapped around it at just the right angle, long fingers a little lax, side of hand disappearing into the shoved-down briefs. 

The name’s probably not real, but the photo actually might be.

His phone pops again. _ Like it? _

Fuck _believing _anything; Grantaire will _say anything_ when he’s about to get off, so he says something stupid, the usual sort of thing, and he’s not even lying this time, not totally.

Yeah he loves it, he’d love it in his mouth and up his ass: tells the guy he’d worship it with his tongue and suck on his balls, and, and, anything – 

It doesn’t take many more messages, shorter and stupider by turns, until he’s coming over his fist in sticky spurts. Grantaire closes his eyes and pants silently through it, phone dropping forgotten onto his chest. 

It’s tempting to just turn it off and turn over afterwards. Fellow-feeling prompts him to send the guy a picture of the mess instead, as proof and incitement.

He gets a terse _thank you_ in return, and boom, that’s it; mission accomplished. He got what he wanted, time to wipe up and roll over. He hesitates a moment before he stars the profile for future reference. Bullshitting aside, it was a pretty dick.

-

The Musain is a different place in the day, when it’s not just a seedy little brasserie manned by a solo, irritated bartender, propped up by three young men with but a single aim and a single liver.

(“We’re the Moirai of mixed drinks,” Bossuet had proclaimed on an earlier evening, bursting into eldritch cackles. “Joly has the liver Tuesdays and Fridays, Grantaire on Mondays, Saturdays, and Wednesdays, and I have it on Thursdays and Sundays, as well as the thirteenth of every month –”

“Liver disease,” Joly says, balancing a spoon on the end of his nose, “is a threat halved when it’s divided by thirds.”)

In the day, or at any time not the middle of the night, it's a pleasing, slightly dilapidated cafe, and one that has had the misfortune of having its upstairs space colonised by a loosely assembled group of students and malcontents. Grantaire, strangely, feels most at home when it’s full of people, although every sort of trope in the world suggests that his rightful place is as a lonely drunk in an empty bar, hitting on Louison, who doesn’t want any more of his brand of bullshit. 

Tropes aside, simple logic suggests that he shouldn’t find the company so congenial when one of them so devoutly doesn’t want him present. And yet, even though it’s Enjolras of all people who doesn’t want him, Grantaire feels welcome.

“Try not to stare so obviously, eh?” Bahorel says, elbowing him mid-ogle. Enjolras is barely visible, talking to Feuilly, just the line of his back and shoulder, the high cut of cheekbone and the fair hair curling over his temple, but what there is of him – Ah, and now he’s seen Bahorel. Not Grantaire, or he wouldn’t be coming across the room quite so eagerly. “Don’t make me regret having brought you back.”

“Too late for that,” Grantaire points out. Anyway, to stare at Enjolras is just a simple universal law, inevitable as the apple falling from the tree to earth_ (F = Gm1m2/r2) _, the polarised click of magnet to magnet. 

He’s radiant today, all the brightness of the world in his hair and skin and teeth, as fresh as a new coin. Time and experience will tarnish it, of course: but he’s still unspent right now, young and obstinate and _coming right towards him_. Right on cue, Enjolras’s radioactive brilliance dims a little when he finally sees Grantaire.

His extended hand drops. “Really? _Today?” _

The remark is addressed to Bahorel, but there’s no doubt that it concerns Grantaire, so Grantaire feels no particular scruple in pointing out – loudly – that the Musain is a public place, and that Enjolras has no ability to control its patronage.

“Eh,” Bahorel says, somehow withstanding Enjolras’s devastatingly levelled gaze, and shrugs. "He's interested?"

Enjolras’s eyebrows rise in polite disbelief, but his gaze shifts from Bahorel to Grantaire, which is a rare and special treat. The whites of his eyes are so pure that they seem faintly blue, stark against the navy of his irises. "Oh? You care about police violence?”

“Well, I care about you,” Grantaire says, after a moment in which he considers faking an interest – but he doesn’t lie to Enjolras. He lives in truth in his presence, even when he camouflages it with defensive facetiae. “I can pretend to care about police violence.”

Enjolras says, “If I believed that you cared about _anything –_”, passionate for half a moment before he stops short, shaking his head as though finishing his sentence would be a waste of his time. 

He nods at Bahorel, a brief inclination of his chin that manages to be respectful and reproving at the same time, and turns to go.

By Grantaire’s standards, that went pretty well.

“Sit down and shut up,” Bahorel says when he says as much, aiming a cuff Grantaire ducks easily. 

Bahorel cares about police violence, which is how he managed to insinuate himself into this clutch of eager students. He’s a natural bridge between people. He throws his acquaintances together without caring about whether they’ll mix or explode, and has managed to share not only a flat but a living room with Grantaire for nearly a year without murdering him, which Grantaire is self-aware enough to realise is almost a qualification for sainthood, so he sits down, and shuts up.

For a while, anyway.

-

Joly and Bossuet are sitting sprawled in a pair of chairs, their feet lazily tangled together. Musichetta is leaning her dark head against Joly’s knee, apparently absorbed in a book. Bossuet spots Grantaire first, and his face does something strange and compressed before he manages to get Joly’s attention and jerk his chin in Grantaire’s direction.

_What – are – you – doing – here? _Joly mouths, in an exaggerated series of syllables that make him look like a fish mouthing bubbles.

Grantaire shrugs. 

Joly mouths something that brings his jaw down for a long moment and then snaps it back up tightly.

Grantaire shrugs, in incomprehension this time.

Joly’s jaw works soundlessly again, as if miming it slower will make it clearer.

Grantaire mimes a blowjob back at him, tongue jabbing into his cheek.

Joly gives him a thumbs-up. Bossuet is laughing into his shoulder. Musichetta continues to ignore them all.

“Right,” Bahorel says, looking around the room and assuming control. He’s not the leader here. There isn’t one, because clear and functional command structures are too fucking bourgeois for today’s socialist left, Grantaire thinks; why let effectiveness get in the way of ideals? But some people have a natural dominance that can’t be eradicated, and Bahorel has a measure of it, with age and experience at his back. Combeferre has a share, too, the kind that comes with a bulging brain like his, and Courfeyrac the kind of natural social ease and assertion that makes people want to arch their backs and bare their throats for him.

_Grantaire _likes him, even, which is a miracle, because Courfeyrac is the kind of person Grantaire would like to be, or could have been, maybe, in a million years a million universes away, which makes him a loathsome asshole by default. Courfeyrac is handsome and clever and hilarious, and makes friends as easily as breathing; is a law student, is a ladies’ man, is somehow _still _not a dick about it. 

Combeferre is less immediately brilliant but more measured, the sort of person Grantaire could never have been in a million years, even if he gave half a fuck about science and medicine and all the kind of shit that mathematical ability facilitates, opening all the doors that _fucking around with a paintbrush never will, are you even fucking listening to me? _

Enjolras – Enjolras has more. Leadership seeps out from his pores like radiation, but he rarely seems willing to use it the way he could. He’s the kind of man who _believes_ that socialist-commo crap about committees and fair, equal votes and all before one, etc., etc., and believing it, tries to live it. That’s what Grantaire thinks in his best and most charitable moments. When he’s particularly bitter, he thinks Enjolras prefers to work at a distance, to delegate to his lieutenants. 

Grantaire’s grand problème with Combeferre and Courfeyrac owes nothing to their personal qualities, and everything to the fact that they’re allowed to live in Enjolras’s pockets. Enjolras is a revolutionary human, and not in the carefully self-conscious way that would be hipsters of Belleville and the godforsaken Marais attempt to be. Enjolras is an original. Grantaire wants to eat him alive like an apple, or failing that, become Plato to his Socrates and dog his footsteps everywhere.

The grand problème de problèmes is that Enjolras has no tolerance for Grantaire’s would-be discipleship. The problème is that Combeferre and Courfeyrac, a neat pack that almost resolves into CombeferreandCourfeyrac, but not quite, make an easy and indivisible whole with Enjolras. 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. It’s illogical, but it’s not three.

-

Max – not that that’s his name – last night’s wank material, _Max_, he doesn’t shut up; except now, his profile offline and grey when Grantaire wants someone to shoot the shit with, a distraction to text with while the rest of the people he considers friends are all stuck in the same room, with their serious shining faces on. It’s not even like Grantaire wants or needs to sext while all the bullshit’s going on; he just wants an excuse not to engage, an excuse to shut up and stop himself from joining it. Max would work, because he for someone who claimed to read and agree with the essay in Grantaire’s profile, apparently didn’t get it. When Grantaire rolled off his futon this morning, there was already a message from him, sent at some disgusting dawn hour. 

_seriously? i thought you didn’t believe in attachment. _

_No, but I meant to talk to you about your profile. I started to last night but we got distracted. _

_i'd rather talk about your mouth on my dick. _

_I can’t sext with you now, I’m in public. _

_sextO, according to l’academie. _

_Do they really think the best way to defend the French language is to make it a museum piece? Language changes. Culture changes. We’re changing. _

_besides we’d lose so many great terms. _

_That too. _

_are you SERIOUSLY using grindr to NONSEXT me. _

_I was interested. You’re right that our language has its limits. You can’t say you’re single without saying lonely. I don’t feel the need to have someone else to be complete. _

_that's what people say when they can’t find anyone. _

_Is that why you’re saying it? _

Existentialism before breakfast. Grantaire had been appalled at at last meeting a guy more cracked than Jehan, who didn’t do that type of uncomfortable emotional scrutiny, but instead was prone to texting weird things at five in the morning, three in the afternoon, and strangest of all, _eight _in the morning. At least Jehan usually had the excuse of not having gone to bed. Why did Grantaire even continue the conversation? He could have just ended it there. Blocked the weirdo, forget his pretty cock and blond pubic hair. Who gave a fuck what he thought?

Grantaire had sent, instead, _i don’t believe in that kind of perfect human connection_. Pauses. _that doesn’t mean i can’t roar into the void about the lack of it. look at the pont des arts. lock after lock of true forever love until they pulled it apart. all that kind of shit does is make everyone feel broken and alone even when they’re with someone because they believe that idea but know they haven’t found their perfect match. which doesn't exist. we're born alone, and we die alone, and we need to learn to live with that. _

There had been no response for a minute or two. Grantaire had imagined Blondie frowning, reading – maybe he’s a bit slow? Having the same kind of reaction Grantaire had had a minute ago in reverse, wondering why he’s talking not-dirty to a stranger who opens his figurative mouth to belch out anti-manifestos like a rain of poisonous toads. 

At last, _You’re a nihilist_.

It hadn’t been a question. Grantaire was reading too much into it, the flatness of the statement, the inherent lack of tone. It wasn’t possible for him to have disappointed someone he _hadn’t even met. _He said, _ camus, baby._ And then, defensively, _ you don’t believe that bullshit anyway. _

_No._ Pause. _I don’t believe our lives are devoid of meaning even if romantic Valentine’s Day love is a capitalist and ideological myth. We have to make our own meaning. If you like Camus, don’t look at Mythe de Sisyphe, look at L’homme révolté. If we decide to live, it’s because we’ve decided that our existence has some positive value. _

_jesus fuck are you a first-year philosophy student_

_Third year, political science. SciencesPo. You? _

-

End of conversation, emphatically. Only now Grantaire’s bored, jittery, uncomfortable, and he wants to keep talking, if Blondie’s taken the hint that Grantaire doesn’t want to swap boring personal details and compare academic dicks; he wants to talk at someone who, apparently for the pleasure of Grantaire’s conversation, not for dirty talk or dick pics, wants to discuss Camus and argue about the meaning of existence even though Grantaire reads Byzantine messages into every pause and amended statement. Which is why he keeps replying, probably. He can’t help himself. 

It doesn’t matter how much he fucks up, how much of his life he burns to the ground; there’s some kind of sickness in him that keeps him dancing for attention, desperate for it, intoxicated by it, whoever’s willing to give it to him. It doesn’t matter that he’s dancing on an edge, that unlike Pavlov’s dog he expects a kick, not a reward, that if it doesn’t come and doesn’t come he’ll do something to make it come. Half an hour into the meeting at the Musain, he sneaks into the bathroom and turns his phone back on.

Max is still grey, offline. Whatever. 

Grantaire unbuckles his belt and takes a picture of his dick through his boxers, half-hard the way he tends to get from proximity whenever Enjolras’s particularly invested in anything. Enjolras is quiet most of the time; not shy, just busy thinking whatever thoughts are percolating in that huge forehead of his. When he’s swept up by something and speaks at length, it takes Grantaire by the balls and squeezes painfully (balls, heart; one or the other). 

Anyway, it’s something he can make use of. It’s not prostituting his admiration. It’s diverting it. Taking some of the pressure off, a trepanation. 

-

[missing activism plot scene, yelling]

-  
“Grand-Aire,” Musichetta whispers when the furor of the Fraisse debate finally dies down. Dark and lovely, she fits into her setting like a tessera into a mosaic, but in Louison’s pointed absence, she’s the only woman present. “We’re going back to Jehan’s after to smoke up and watch a porno, are you coming?”

“_You _may be into group sex,” Grantaire says, instinctively recoiling “but I don’t need to see Joly or Bossuet naked.”

Combeferre clears his throat and all attempts at setting up an orgy die. No one wants to be told off by Combeferre, who’s far better at it than Enjolras, and once scared the almost-literal shit out of Marius when he was still wet behind the ears.

(Correction: when he was _wetter._ What Éponine, hard-living, hard-drinking and hard in general, sees in him –)

-

She’s lurking at the bottom of the stairs when the meeting breaks up. Grantaire’s planning on teasing her about Marius’s inexplicable appeal again, or perhaps suggesting that she comes to Jehan’s with him and brings Marius along, toughen him up, give the guy an _education_ – but the look on her face stops him.

“Hey,” Grantaire says. He wants to touch her shoulder, but doesn’t dare. Éponine doesn’t like to be touched. Do it when she’s not expecting it, and you could get hurt. “Everything okay? Where’s Azelma?”

“School,” Éponine says, and crosses her arms over her chest when the door opens behind her. She needs more clothes, but the sort she likes don’t cover enough of her. She sniffs. Her nose is red from the cold. “I hope.”

“The kid?”

“Fuck knows. Fine, wherever he is. He can take care of himself.”

“Haven’t seen him around for a few days,” Grantaire says, and holds up his hands when Éponine glowers at him. She has a thousand-yard stare, black as night and disconcerting as the abyss. “Fine, yeah, I agree, Gav can take care of himself. Drop him off a building and he lands on his feet. What’s the problem, then? You looking for Bahorel?”

“_No, _” she says like he’s stupid, sounding for a moment like any other, normal, teenage girl, and peering over his shoulder. “I don’t come to this stupid rich boys’ club for you two. I can find you at home.” 

The moment she sees Marius is obvious. Colour comes into her thin face; the huge eyes, made more cavernous by the application of too much kohl, light up. 

Grantaire’s stomach twists. “Éponine,” he says. “Don’t. It’s not going to happen.” 

It’s cruel, but it’s crueller for her to hope. 

Marius has a studio in their building, a small cut above a squat, and lives in the sort of genteel poverty that kids think is romantic when they’re young, and living cheap means taking their belt in a notch and hanging out with Bahorel’s student friends. He’ll get over it. A few years from now, he’ll finish law school and turn into a lawyer, get a place somewhere in Saint-Germain, and boast at dinner parties about his wild bohemian youth.

Right now he has the frightened eyes of a fawn as well as its dappled hide, and a tendency to bite his lower lip. He brings out something yearning and protective in Éponine that her own siblings haven’t touched. It’s not the simple desire to corrupt him; _that, _ Grantaire would’ve understood. 

Grantaire gives up. He tried. That’s more than he usually does. “What do you want with Marius?”

“A girl he met the other day,” Éponine says, and wipes her nose again, defensively. “He wanted her number. I got it for him.”

“No girl you’d know is fit company for Marius. Lose it.”

“I’m not an idiot, am I? She’s not one of those.”

“Even worse.”

“Look, he wants it,” Éponine says, "and _I _got it for him," and pushes past him. 

When Marius sees her, he looks happier to see her than usual: less the fawn at bay, the colt poised to flee. Éponine registers the difference. She fairly glows with joy at being _wanted _for once, wanted by _Marius_, at being _needed, _ however vicariously, and Grantaire turns away, feeling sour and sorry.

-

When he pulls out his phone, Blondie’s still offline. No response to the photo. Probably still sulking because Grantaire cut him dead earlier, or maybe he’s just realised that he’s talking to a wall. _life's a bitch, _ Grantaire taps out, _ and then you die. truest thing camus ever wrote. _

-

He’s in the mood for cheap and sleazy, for something that’ll leave him flatter and fouler still when it’s done so he lets Bossuet and Joly take an elbow each and haul him away to Jehan’s funny-smelling little flat, stopping on the way for cigarettes and vodka. 

Watching a porno at Jehan's, it turns out, means lying on the many-cushioned floor of his flat, taking turns on the hookah and silently appreciating a grainy screening of Warhol's_ Blowjob_, projected in 8mm onto the only wall not smothered with tapestry or lacquered with collage.

_Blowjob_ is a disappointment. 

"I thought we were watching a porno," Grantaire grumbles, and Jehan gives him his sweet faraway smile, uncomprehending of the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. 

"That's the point," Musichetta says, sounding bored. "Once you accept that you're seeing all that you're going to see, your mind is free to look at it in another way."

"Do you think Warhol actually filmed this guy getting blown?" Joly wonders. "You can't see anything. Let's not, and say we did, that kind of thing?"

"If he's getting blown he's getting blown badly," Bossuet says, squinting. "I mean, jesus. Look at him. It's like watching paint dry."

In flickering light and shadow on the wall, a young man closes his eyes, exhales obviously. Bites his lip. Opens them again. You could imagine that there's a heaviness to his eyelids, that someone – man or woman; the putative fellator is utterly out of frame, purely anonymous, infinitely imaginable – is doing something depraved with their mouth. 

"Children," Jehan says gently. "This is art. Let your minds wander."

"The journey's the point and not the destination?" Bossuet suggests, with attempted wisdom. "--Although getting or giving, there has to be a destination, right? Fellatio: ergo sum. I attempt to procure an orgasm, therefore I give head, or get it."

"Also the point," Musichetta says, a semiotician with honours in the darkest and most abstract. The heavy silver and chalcedony hoops in her ears glint and sway in the low light. "This is a study in watching as well as being watched. We're voyeurs; the repetition of the film turns our thoughts inwards. Bossuet is right, though he doesn't mean to be. The opacity of the narrative makes us realise how much of ourselves we project into the image, and how much we construe from context, from memory, from the linguistic cue. We oscillate between an awareness of this contingency and a suspended promise that meaning will be given to us, that the end will make things clear."

"Foucault's pendulum," Jehan murmurs. "No – Poe’s."

"I'm not fucked up enough for this," Grantaire says, and beside him Joly has silently gone into fizzing lemonade giggles, confirming Grantaire’s suspicion that Musichetta, at least, is deliberately fucking with them.

He's never one hundred percent certain about Jehan.

Tiny incremental changes of expression continue to sweep over the face of the man on the wall, shadows making his cheekbones stark. It may be bullshit, but the constant loop of what is probably, but not definitely, a man getting a live blowjob makes Grantaire pull out his phone and see if there's been any response to his bathroom gambit – 

Wrong word. It makes this thing sound like chess. Chess is as interminable as arthouse pseudo-porno, and Grantaire hates the fuck out of it, not least for the underlying algorithms describing every move on the board. Chess, like Bossuet's understanding of the blowjob, may take for-fucking-ever, but it's something with a beginning and an end. You make moves, but they're all going somewhere. 

The societal structure of a relationship is the same: the first date leads to the second, to the third, to sex. To a talk about exclusivity, and then, maybe, moving in together. A ring. Kids, if you bend that way, and then, ideally, a shared grave-marker. Grantaire doesn't believe in endgames. He believes in ephemera. He believes in hitting someone up and getting off, a little death that renews itself.

_spit or swallow? _he messages. It takes a minute, but the grey turns to green, and Max's profile comes online.

_Condom. _

He’s really good at flat responses that hit like a brick wall.

It’s Grantaire’s own perversity that makes him hit the wall and then try to get around it anyway. _gross. you'll taste like latex when I kiss you after_

_You kiss men after? _

_only assholes don't. _

_That seems ‘gross’ to me. _

_mm. exactly. nothing filthier than sucking your own come off someone's tongue. _

... 

That's all he sends. A literal ellipsis. Who bothers to type out their own silence? Grantaire imagines the unknown Max’s unknown upper lip drawing back from his teeth. 

Maybe he’s turned on a little by the dirtiness; maybe it’s temporarily blown his circuits. Head or pants. Head and pants. That’s the best type of sex, when it gets you off upstairs as well as downstairs, no vast yawning crevasse between the two to bridge or reconcile. 

Maybe he’s simply disgusted, above and below. Grantaire imagines him in a clean white room full of minimalist Ikea shit and autoclaving his toothbrush, fucking through latex, his brain and his sex life clean and antiseptic. 

_sex is dirty or it’s not worth doing. you can't stay clean and inside the lines. sex is rugburn and fucking up your neck and mess and feeling sore the next day. _

_Not the way I do it. _Wall again.

_that just makes me want to eat your ass out_

_Okay, that's actually filthy. _

_i'd make you shower first, don't worry. _

"Are you cruising while we're trying to appreciate _art_?" Bossuet says, trying to snatch the phone. "Dude, you're out of control."

"I'm wild," Grantaire says, and shoves his phone down the front of his jeans, where no one present, unfortunately, will venture. "Anyway, wasn't Musichetta just saying that this thing was supposed to be all reflexive and shit?"

"Are you claiming that swiping right is a reflex for you now?"

_ “Left, _surely –”

"Children," Jehan says sadly.

On the wall, the man is now smoking a meditative cigarette.

-

Floréal was a breath of spring in human form, a modern Primavera standing barefoot in the grass among the poppies and corn-lilies. She doesn't believe in commitment, and disdains anything as bourgeois or appalling as exclusivity. They fucked in the backseat of his car and on her couch and on his floor. Grantaire went down on her in club bathrooms, the house music distant as the memory of the sea heard in a shell, his knees aching from the concrete and the chemicals in his blood making him feel like he could stay down there forever.

It's autumn when she says, "Look," and stirs her coffee, tapping her spoon against the porcelain after she licks it clean. "I like him, and he'd like it, being together, monogamously everything. I really like him, so why not? Time to try something new."

Grantaire tries to change her mind. When that doesn't work, he calls her a sellout, a harlot, worse things. The words slide off without making an impression. Floréal is too certain of herself for anything to pierce her, too entirely complete a person. Next to her, Grantaire feels like something fresh and bleeding, an open wound that won't cauterise.

"That's not because of me, cheri,” she says. “That's you, in yourself. You've always been looking for something to fill you up, to fit into your rough places. You're not in love with me. You’re wounded by my philosophy.”

Floreal: pretty and pragmatic, empathetic without being sympathetic, shrugging away his attempts to wound, to get a hold. Grantaire snarls, "You have none," even though he already feels stupid, melodramatic, young saying it.

"It's not the same as yours. It just seemed the same for a while, maybe." She shrugs a third time, smiles a little sadly now, and then somehow manages to say something worse. "You're a romantic."

-

Bahorel takes him under his wing after that, offering him his couch. That's before he informally adopts Gavroche, or is adopted by him – the distinction's unclear – and then the kid's sisters, and they all play musical chairs, reshuffling. Bahorel is a natural patriarch, despite his cheerful claims to nonconformity, the girlfriend who's not a girlfriend, the successful non-possessive relationship that Grantaire observes but can't understand. He gathers people under his rooftree the way Courfeyrac takes in strays, but Bahorel's linger longer. Courfeyrac is a fixer-upper; Bahorel less so.

"You can tell me to fuck off any time, you know," Grantaire says combatively, for maybe the fortieth time, and Bahorel gives the best, broadest Gallic shrug.

"I can, but why would I?"

Bahorel introduces him to people, a few girls, and then, after observing his progress, a few guys. Grantaire's not looking for anything. He broods over Floréal. He argues against the accusation of sentiment, romanticism, loudly, with a person who's not there, while Bahorel smokes and chuckles but refuses to offer his opinion. 

Bahorel's the one who introduces him to the loose collection of student ideologues who gather in the Musain after having their club revoked by the university. ("Those fuckers," Courfeyrac says, "we have the right to meet, it's in the charter," and finally succeeds in burning a sweatshirt with the Sorbonne's insignia live on webcam, after the first few failed attempts at coaxing it to catch alight.) 

That’s how Grantaire meets Enjolras, and if Floréal was spring, Enjolras is full summer. "Jesus," Grantaire says the first time he sets eyes on him, and it's purely a response to his hotness. 

"_Jesus, _" he says an hour later, in a different tone, and it's a compliment to the tour de force of his personality, his certainty, his drive.

Enjolras is utterly complete. He doesn't look or speak as if he's ever known a moment of self-doubt, doesn't betray a flicker of inconstancy. Grantaire's never wanted to go down on his knees for anyone more, but even he's not sure whether he'd rather worship Enjolras or suck him off, whether he wants to have him or be him or learn from him.

"Hi," Enjolras says, the first time they meet. His eye contact is perfect. His eyes are a clear Raphael blue, the colour of heaven. His handshake is firm, if a touch impersonal. The moment feels heavy, somehow, more than the first rush of a sudden mad crush, of heady physical intoxication. "You're a friend of Bahorel's? That's great. Are you a member of _Attac_, too?"

"Fuck, no," Grantaire says, still staring foolishly at him. The bronze wings of the future are beating their thousand wings in his ears, frantic as the beat of his heart. “I wouldn't be part of any club that'd have me as a member." 

The hand he's holding seems to withdraw a little, and Grantaire realises he's been grasping it too long for politeness and hurriedly lets go. 

Enjolras rubs his palm against his thigh, frowning. "That's a quote, isn't it?"

"All of life is a quotation," Grantaire says, doubling down, tongue loose with infatuation. "There's nothing new under the sun. We live la vie postmodern: all we can say or do has been said before, which means that we're reduced to cliché. Even the virgins have been fucked before."

Enjolras is still frowning. The friendly distance in his eyes has gone, and he’s examining Grantaire closely, _personally_, more thoroughly than his doctor ever has, looking for – "Do you really believe that?"

Grantaire says, "Sure." He’ll say anything, if it keeps Enjolras looking at him like this.

"Then what's the point of anything? You might as well give up and cut your own throat."

"That's the idea exactly."

"Oh," Enjolras says, and it would be impossible to say that he looks disappointed. He looks vaguely sorry for Grantaire, which is infinitely worse. “That’s bleak.”

"I’m a realist."

"I hope you enjoy the meeting," Enjolras says, moving away, and the incredible flashlight focus of his attention is suddenly gone, switched off as though it never was. 

It's the politest rebuff Grantaire will ever get from him, because it's all downhill from here.

-

_you replied to me wanting to eat your ass out but not to my camus quote. _

_Because I already told you that I don’t like Mythe de Sisyphe. _

_ so you just didn’t engage? _

_I don’t waste effort when people aren’t going to respond to it. It’s like pouring water into a sieve. _

_sisyphean. _

_Exactly. _

_you don’t think that you could convince them? _

_I think that they have to want to be convinced. _

_i'd let you convince me. _

_With my dick, right? _

_précisément. _The guy knows him well enough to figure out the beats of his conversation. Grantaire finds it vaguely pleasing, a short-circuit that cuts directly to orgasm. He’s about to suggest how hard he would need to be persuaded (with Max’s dick) when the original conversational line seems to pull more of an answer from him. _although it’s harsh, deciding not to put the effort in. correct, but harsh. you could say that it’s another form of nihilism. _

_You could. _

_you wouldn’t? _

_I don’t know. Why try, when they not only don’t want to be convinced, they prefer to sit on the sidelines and sneer at your effort? There are enough genuinely interested people out there. _

_two answers. irredeemable asshole, or someone who’s gone too far into irony to find their way back to pre-pomo without feeling weird about it. if the first, don’t bother; the second, kick their ass, shake their hand, maybe you’ll convert them. _

_What a pity I can’t just do it with my dick. _

_fuck the world, but for its own good? _

_Précisément. _

_philosophy and fucking. the best french tradition. _

_It’s true. _

_you free to sexto? tell me how you’d feel about me eating your ass. _

_Uncomfortable. _

_turned on? like, squirming, but humping the mattress kind of uncomfortable? _

A long pause, as though Blondie’s actually considering it seriously, not just going through the expected template responses that lead to getting off. _ A little, actually. _

-

_We’ve talked about the undue importance of romantic relationships in our society, _ another conversation begins. Grantaire’s beginning to think that maybe he’s said too much about that, too many times, to too many people. _But sex is important to me. And I think love has to be, too. I just don’t see how to put them together. _

_you've never fucked anyone you loved? _

_I’ve never wanted to fuck anyone I love. A better way to put it. _

_who do you love? _

_My friends. My family, sometimes. People in general. It’s important to. _

_sounds like a duty. _

_Did you go back to L’homme révolté? He says that love and revolution are necessarily coexistent and incompatible at the same time. Loving someone who doesn’t exist yet is the meaning of revolution. Like I said before, we have to make our own meaning in life. _

_so you love indiscriminately. _

_I love in generalities. _

_you still sound like a first year philosophe. the rubber hasn’t hit the road for you yet. _

_Is that an anal joke? _

_it's 3am and you’re using grindr to nonsext me. of course. _Grantaire pauses. _I agree, somewhat. _

_How? _

_in love with someone i can never fuck. i'm bulletproof. one bullet has my name on it and it’s one that won’t fire. _

_You’re saying that you’re cut off from meaning. That’s not the same thing as opening yourself to it. _

_je suis seul. _

_So am I. But when I say it, I mean only that I'm single. Do you? _

Grantaire sends him a photo of his erection as an answer.

-

It’s becoming a habit, texting Max not just when he’s turned on, but to argue, to debate, to trade bits of L’homme révolté. Four days, and innumerable messages later, Grantaire’s exchanged a dozen dick pictures with the guy and got off to him several times more. He’s pretty in every known piece, in disembodied parts that don’t quite add up to a naked total. That doesn’t mean that Grantaire wants to do anything as stupid as meet him.

_Why not? I want to suck you off. I’ve told you that. _

_read your plato? it’d be a shadow and a mockery. _

_I’m good at it. _

_sure. _

_Give me a serious reason. We’ve been talking for days. I like the way you think. We’re sexually compatible. Why not? _

_this is not a thing. _

_I’m not saying it should be. I’m saying I want to suck your cock, not just talk about it. _

Grantaire turns the app off, and then his phone, for good measure.

-

Of course, he turns it back on not much later. He’s never been the sort of person to leave the last word unspoken, the glass unfinished. Max hasn’t said anything more, and it’s with a sudden panic that Grantaire remembers, thing or not, Max doesn’t believe in wasting his time with people who don’t want to be convinced. He could block Grantaire, and that would be that.

_hey. _

_So? _

_yeah. don't get your hopes up, though. i keep my face out of pics for my own reasons. i’m not exactly an oil painting. _

_I don’t care about looks. Besides, I’ve seen your dick, and I like that. _

_which is what’s important, of course. _

_I enjoy your conversation. I don’t think you’ll bury my body under the floorboards. _

_is that what you say to every guy you chat up on here? _

_Honestly, most of them block me once I stop talking dirty, or after we’ve hooked up. _

_are you warning me that you’re not that good at head after all? _

_No, I’m great at head. I think the problem is my personality. _

_anyone who says that is an asshole, _Grantaire says, conveniently ignoring the fact that he nearly blocked the guy for trying to have serious conversations around nicely-lit and framed pictures of his cock and ass. That was days ago. _you’re a good guy. intense, but smart as fuck. _

_You too. _

_smartmouthed, maybe. _

_I’m serious. _

_this is why i don’t want to meet you, _Grantaire says. He almost decides to turn his phone off again, his own honesty scalding him raw. Max just sends him a question mark, and okay, he can still salvage this with a throwaway line or a flippant comment. _ i'll disappoint and then you’ll block me. _

_You won’t and I won’t, but if I did, what’s the worst that could happen? There are thousands of other people out there. _

_you might get thousands of messages pretty boy, but it’s not the case for everyone. _

_I’m only replying to you. _

_you don’t approve of my philosophy. _

_I don’t have to agree to respect someone. Although I’d respect you more if you claimed a serious belief in something. _

-

“Far be it from me to discourage you,” Bahorel says, “but are you sure you want to go back already? You got kind of reamed out over your comments on Fraissé – deservedly, but still.”

“I can take a reaming,” Grantaire says, and smirks to himself. He’s meeting Max afterwards, so one way or the other, he’s getting fucked tonight. “Enjolras doesn’t scare me.”

“Yeah?”

“I worship him. It’s different.”

“Mm,” Bahorel says, but he doesn’t say anything more.

The room above the Musain is alive with conversation when they get there, buzzing like a hive. Enjolras turns to greet them, the way he does every new arrival, and he and Bahorel exchange their usual manly handclasp. “Bahorel,” he says warmly, and then, more neutrally, “Grantaire.” 

“Angel without wings!” Grantaire says. Bahorel rolls a despairing eye at him and abandons the two of them for the bar. “Enjolras. What’s the discussion about tonight?”

Enjolras’s classical features distort in an unexpected grimace. “Love, apparently.”

“What?”

“Marius.”

“You’re joking.”

“I don’t joke,” Enjolras says, which is such a lie that when Grantaire raises his eyebrows he amends his comment. “I’m not joking.”

“I have to see this,” Grantaire says. They trade grimaces, and suddenly Grantaire realises that they’re having a civil conversation. He’s known Enjolras a year and never managed it.

Love is, in fact, in the air; up in the stratosphere, where Marius is currently residing. He turns and beams ingenuously when Grantaire reaches him, apparently seeing him as some sort of saviour from Courfeyrac and Joly’s questioning.

“What’s this I hear?” Grantaire says immediately. “Marius, my child, are you in _love_?  
-  
It’s not like police violence’s not an issue. Grantaire’s not stupid enough to think it’s not; he’s not surrounded by an aura that whispers _Louis-le-Grand-Ecole-Normale-Germain-de-Pres_, a protective bubble that makes the flics keep their distance and nod politely to him in the street. He’s been in rows and riots, spontaneous bursts of émeute that spill over from wino brawls and political protests at the same time.

It’s how he met Bahorel, more years ago than he wants to think about, back when he still couldn’t get through two or three bottles of wine without puking and went down like a ninepin when someone wanted to get into it with him. Grantaire can take a punch now, and it’s not like his nose was Hellenic before it got busted the first time. He doesn’t want to remember who he was three or four years ago, whining and puking and crying, sure that life should be _fair, _ that the universe owed him some kind of justice, still giving a fuck about what his father thought about him and – 

Police violence is a thing, but complaining that things should be _fair _does fuck-all to make it happen. The best you can do is keep your head down and your nose clean, and if one of the bastards takes exception to your face, say _yes, sir_ and go with it. Grantaire should know. The worst you can do is pick a fight about it; put yourself out there, be a massive pain in the public ass, and then, _then_ complain when they mop you up.

“Some people don’t have the option of keeping their heads down,” Combeferre says crisply; “nor do they have the kind of faces that the police are likely to leave alone.”

“All the more reason to behave,” Grantaire says obstinately, scratching at the seam of his jeans.

“I can’t believe you’re actually arguing for _good behaviour, _” Bossuet says wonderingly. “You. Grantaire. Grand-Aire, the west wind, Zephyr in a bag; _you!” _

“Oh, he doesn’t mean it,” Courfeyrac says, with the kind of veiled, good-humoured menace he’s good at; the kind that doesn’t announce itself as steel until it’s sunk in your gut. “He’s playing _advocatus diaboli, _ but give him a minute, or another bottle of beer, and he’ll switch sides and turn promoter of the faith.” There’s a warm smudge of emotion over his cheekbones, red under the gold of his skin.

It’s not like he can talk about punchable faces; he has a bubble of his own, even if it’s not hallmarked Louis-le-Grand, it’s the well-dressed, well-fed, well-meaning kind of benevolent assurance that comes from money and breeding, from being handsome and dark-eyed and adored by everyone he’s ever met. 

And Feuilly, probably, who’s sitting with his arms folded and jaw tight, and fuck.

“Yeah,” Grantaire says, because it’s not like he’s ever going to be faithful enough to a principle to defend it to the bitter death; life’s too short. He gives Courfeyrac a tight smile, and watches a little of the tension in his shoulders loosen. “Give me another beer, and I’m yours. I’ll say anything; “The CRF are pigs”, “Up the PCA!”, “Punish the government on the streets!” – you name it. Fuck, I’ll go get that beer myself.”

He needs a drink. He needs to not be here, being an asshole without being able to help himself, worse than he knew he was being; needs to be away from the cold feeling in the room and the sense of having gone too far, from Bahorel’s disappointment and Marius’s sad confused eyes and the look on Feuilly’s face, which is worse than if he’d actually said anything; it’s one thing to punch someone who was going to punch you, or to punch back, but to attack blindly and blunderingly against someone who’s not fighting, that’s – 

-

“I’m an asshole,” Grantaire says conversationally when he hears Bahorel come up on the terrace behind him. He’s got a couple of empty cans lined up on the railing, serving as shitty and inadequate ashtrays. He may have smoked a few too many cigarettes a little too fast, but his hands are still shaking. It’s always best to start the conversation with the other person’s lines. They’re less likely to hit you when you won’t stop hitting yourself, out of confusion if not pity or a sense of justice done. “A dick, a moron, a bastard; whatever you want to call me. You know I can’t fucking shut myself up when I get going. Next time, just fucking smack me. I’ll smack you back, but you can take it, and at least I’ll _shut the fuck up.” _

“Well,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire knocks a beer can off the rail with his wild recoil, “that’s not a method I’d considered using.” He looks like he’s considering its merits now.

“_Fuck,” _ Grantaire says feelingly, “I thought you were – _go away_. Jesus. It’s the middle of fucking winter out here.”

“It’s a public place,” Enjolras says. “As far as I’m aware, you don’t control its patronage.”

What an asshole. “I’m smoking.”

“I didn’t ask you to stop.”

“Yeah, but you make that _face_,” Grantaire says, and stubs his cigarette out pre-emptively. He can’t afford to waste it, though, so he tucks it behind his ear and tries to straighten and sober up. He’s seen this one-two punch before. “What is it, Enjolras? Your attack-dog didn’t do a good enough job savaging me in there, you had to come out and finish the job? I don’t know how Marius ever sewed his guts up enough to shove them back in and come back.” 

The corner of Enjolras’s mouth lifts, like the brutal shredding of Marius’s original milquetoast wishy-washy centrist ideals on his first visit to the Musain is a very fond memory. “That’s usually how it works.” 

At least he’s a self-aware asshole. “How does good cop/bad cop even work with three of you? You let Combeferre do the ideological assault, Courfeyrac kisses it all better or sets it on fire, depending on the day, and you – what?”

“I make sure that you’re okay afterwards,” Enjolras says, and glances at him. The curve of his ear is already red with cold. “I make sure we haven’t permanently alienated someone who could be useful. I bring you back in from the cold.”

Grantaire looks away. He can’t stare at Enjolras when Enjolras is staring back. “Even though you don’t like me, and loathe everything I said in there, and would have fucked me up for it if Combeferre didn’t do it first?”

“Even though I disagree with everything you said in there,” Enjolras agrees. “I let Combeferre do the fucking-up because he does it better.”

“_You’re_ meant to be the fighty one.”

“Not with potential allies.”

“Me? Ha.”

“No? You sounded like you spoke from experience.”

“Not the grenade-and-rubber-bullets sort of experience,” Grantaire says; is this an attempt to bond? Jesus. “Old-fashioned boots and truncheons and I promise you, I deserved it.”

“Really?”

“Like you don’t want to kick the shit out of me every time I enter a room you’re in.”

Enjolras laughs under his breath, which is something Grantaire’s never managed to get him to do before. He’s seen it happen, on the rare occasion, but it’s never been _his. _

He glances sideways, just a little, in time to catch the amusement softening Enjolras’s severely lovely mouth, the sharp angles of his cheekbones rounded with the smile. _Fuck. _ He’s going to be seeing that look for months, a brilliant after-image in fluorescent colour like the residue of an explosion, whenever he closes his eyes. He pulls his head together enough to say, “You’re not denying it.”


End file.
